


How Pale and Wanton Thrillful

by mokuyoubi



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hallucinations, Hannibal (TV) Radiance Anthology, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Murder Husbands, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-18 13:14:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14213925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mokuyoubi/pseuds/mokuyoubi
Summary: Nightmares aren’t new. In fact, given the frequency with which he’s had them, Will should be used to them by now. The subject matter has changed over time, from the groundless, ephemeral fears of a child with an empathy disorder abandoned by his mother, to an unmoored, loner teenager desperate for connection, and finally as an adult both terrified and seduced by the images conjured by his mind.Post-fall, Hannibal is gone, and Will's tenuous grip on reality is fast unravelling.





	1. Chapter 1

Nightmares aren’t new. In fact, given the frequency with which he’s had them, Will should be used to them by now. The subject matter has changed over time, from the groundless, ephemeral fears of a child with an empathy disorder abandoned by his mother, to an unmoored, loner teenager desperate for connection, and finally as an adult both terrified and seduced by the images conjured by his mind.

For a time, after he’d been treated for the encephalitis, after he’d recovered from the physical damage Hannibal had inflicted upon him, after he crawled his way from the bloody, smouldering wreckage of their friendship and found Molly, Will had looked back on the nightmares he’d had before with a sense of relief. 

Those fever-soaked hallucinations had haunted him for years, until he’d realised that no fear could ever affect him as deeply as those he’d harboured at that specific point in time. The truth of what he was capable of lurking just beyond the periphery of his consciousness, manifested in his sleep. 

Every click of hooves on polished floor was a hammer to his temple. The brush of feathers against his skin like the whisper of air displaced by someone passing close enough to touch. Antler tips digging into his ribs, worming inexorably beneath the skin and the spill of black, dead blood, thick enough for Will to taste the rot of it on the air.

It stuck with him in his waking hours, bringing him up short in the hallways at Quantico. A woman in heels and floral perfume with the beginning sweetness of death, loose hair drifting past his skin, and Will had to duck into the bathroom, drawing ragged breaths. The mouldering of leaves clenched in his hands, and Garrett Jacob Hobbs staring back at him from the mirror.

Compared to that, the nightmares he’d suffered while in Molly’s gentle care were child’s play. To be soothed away by soft hands in his hair and murmured words from sleep-loose lips. Banished by the warm glow of the fireplace, a row of sleeping dogs, and a child’s laughter.

That Hannibal was a regular fixture in them was no surprise, given all that had transpired between them. In all honesty, Will couldn’t rightfully call them nightmares. He knew he should, and if he’d ever admitted to having them, certainly he would have. Dreams of what might have been, had they taken a different path. He’d wake from visions of blood and death, the flash of sharp teeth at his throat, and there was the sweat and the shortness of breath he’d come to expect, but it was altogether different.

Nightmares he can handle; this is different. 

Will can tell it from the first night he spends in his new home. They are a physical presence in the room, lurking in the shadows, waiting for him to fall asleep to close in for the kill. Randy growls at the window and Daisy paces back and forth across the narrow length of the living room. Winston just rests his head traced in greying hairs on Will’s knee and looks up at him plaintively. And, foolishly, spitting into the wind, Will still closes his eyes and lets sleep take him.

At first, they’re unlike any nightmares he’s had before. Not the relentless hounding monsters at his heels, or the gut-wrenching fantasies of what it might be like to watch the light go out of someone’s eyes. It’s nothing solid that he can put into words. That might make it easier to handle. Naming things makes them real. The details slip through his fingers when he tries to cling to them in the morning, like smoke in his grasp. A queasy, uneasy pit lingers in his stomach and hot-cold pinpricks of sweat on his brow.

Will washes them down the drain of the shower along with the grime of travel. He stands under the spray until the water runs cold, and then stands there a while longer, waiting to feel revitalised. When he closes his eyes, he can still feel the stippling pain of hitting the water, the jar of broken bones and bruised skin. That riotous roar of the approaching ocean cut suddenly, deafeningly short, and water so cold it seared him, so violent it tore Hannibal from his arms. Then nothing but layer upon layer of silent darkness, wrapping around his chest and squeezing the life from him, pulling him down, down, down...

With a gasp Will comes back to himself, sputtering shower water, blinking it from his eyes. He half falls out of the basin tub to grab the sink and anchor himself to solid ground. There’s no one staring back at him from the mirror but himself, no matter how long Will searches the angles of his face for those familiar sharp planes. 

For a brief, flickering moment, the shadows behind him grow darker. Like storm clouds gathering before a hurricane, they balloon outward, trapping the light and pulling it in. Will watches in resignation, heart beating in his throat. His eyes are sore from lack of sleep and the sting of water, blood-shot and dry, and when he blinks, the shadows are back where they belong. Still breathing hard, Will stumbles into the bedroom and pulls the comforter around himself until his heart rate is back in the double digits.

For this new chapter of his life, Will didn’t bring much along with him. The dogs. His boat. A single suitcase of clothes and toiletries. His rifle and his shotgun. Fishing gear, and his dad’s old tackle box full of fly-tying supplies. He’d left his wedding band on the kitchen table, along with the papers Molly would need to sign and file. That was his final gift to her, not making her ask.

Out in the Florida sunshine, everything is simpler. No shadows chasing him out here, no endless winter driving the chill deeper into his bones with every passing year. Life could be as simple as the engine he’s taking apart, where everything has a place and Will knows the order. No one to pull him back into the game. 

Hannibal is dead. Molly is free. And Jack will never find him here.

Always before there’s been something holding him back from cutting that final tie--obligation, expectation. Guilt, Hannibal would probably say, and that would be true, to an extent. The idea that there might be someone out there suffering that Will could have helped certainly played a part. But he thinks now, looking back, it was hope. Not for those he could save, but for someone to save him.

That’s gone, too. Washed away in the tears of the Atlantic.

So Will settles down to the task of making a home out of this place. A little plot of land off a nameless stretch of road in the Keys, the sum of royalties and savings set aside for Someday. Hardly the slice of heaven he and Molly had dreamed up, with the blue shutters and rocking chairs on the porch, white-washed dock with a gazebo for sipping beer and watching the sunset. More of a shack really, tucked away among the trees of the inlet, but it’s more than enough space for him and the dogs. The boathouse has a built-in workshop, and soon enough, he has a steady trickle of customers from the locals who like that he’s close-by, cheap, and efficient.

For a couple of weeks, he wakes and shakes loose the fog of his dreams, and thinks, _maybe._

Maybe he can make a go of it, alone. He was never meant for anyone else. (Neither was Hannibal. That the two of them ever found one another was disastrous miracle). Better to spend his days in solitude, away from the influence of others preying on his mind. The days pass by uneventfully. When there are engines to repair, that occupies his time, and when there aren’t, he ties flies or reads.

Every morning as the dogs run out through the screen door and Will watches the sunlight skipping over the waves, he tells himself he’ll go fishing again soon. But when he stands on the dock, considering the boat, all he sees is the mostly decomposed body washed up on the shore. The disbelief, the unreality of it, police tape and flashing lights and the gawking onlookers and Will falling to his knees.

A part of Will had refused to accept it for the longest time. The face was too distorted--bloated and sunken, and there was something _wrong_ about it. Even as Jack clapped him on the back and told him to go home, it was over, Will raged with denial inside.

Cold water and the adipocere had done a decent job of preservation--enough that careful work by Zeller and Price had confirmed what they all knew already. Fingerprints, DNA from the tooth pulp, even the traces of Mason’s seal where the skin hadn’t been eaten away by sea creatures.

Now Will’s stomach lurches at the thought of eating anything that came from the ocean. He can’t even muster up a sliver of humour over the fact that he’s squeamish at the idea of second-hand cannibalism from dining on seafood that’s nibbled human flesh, when he’s eaten plenty first-hand.

In the evenings, his tiny shack shrinks down to the beams of lamplight cast across the floor. Will’s no stranger to living in small spaces, and he finds it comforting--grounding, really, to have everything he needs to survive close at hand. Just a kitchen and a row of dog beds by the pullout sofa he's taken to sleeping in. Will can fling open the windows and leave the door open to the screen. The breeze comes in off the water, and it’s enough to cool down the whole house.

It’s been a couple of weeks and looking back he’ll realise it happened too gradually for him to see outright, but he should have known. First it’s in the lazy turn of the ceiling fan, _click click clicking_ away. Stripes of shadow and illumination flickering over the page of the book before him--light then dark, light then dark. 

Will finds himself studying the shadow rather than the words, and everything else slips away. The gentle chorus of insects and the crash of the waves, Daisy’s chew-toy squeaking, even the sound of the pull-chain clinking. Nothing but the whir of the fan blades slicing through the air. Air that is suddenly denser, pressing in against his skin, dragging through his lungs. How sharp the blades must be--as sharp as the one he’d wielded on the cliffside…

Reality bends with the warping of the shadows, and it’s suddenly as though he is in two places at once. The scene from that night overlays the mundanity of the room with its peeling plaster and chipped tile. Just the night playing tricks on tired eyes--Will imagines the snap of leathery wings opening wide and the broad, deadly swish of a tail as the Dragon closes in on his prey. And in that moment, Hannibal looks more human than he ever has in Will’s eyes, staggering to his feet.

Will can still feel blood pouring freely from his cheek wound. He recalls the moment he decided. The weight of the blade in his hand, and the pressure it takes to cut through flesh and muscle. It’s something Will’s thought about before, as he walked alongside Hannibal in Italy, forgiveness in hand--would he be able to follow through?

But there’s no hesitation when he sinks it into the Dragon’s side and pulls the wound open wide. There’s nothing but determination and exhilaration and here, as the darkness creeps in from the corners of the room, it washes over Will again, reliving the moment. Stomach swooping with sickly sweet anticipation when his eyes met Hannibal’s and they move as one. The sheer, overwhelming, satisfied relief of seeing Dolarhyde fall at their hands.

When he looks down at his hands now, they’re sticky with blood, flickering vivid candy red and a rich rusty brown with the turn of the fan, light and shadow. Will turns his hands over wonderingly studying his palms--where is it coming from? Warm, fresh, and thick enough to scent the air with that familiar metallic tang. Then he feels it, the sting of something incredibly thin and sharp slicing through skin, and new blood wells up there. Bringing his hands closer, Will can see dozens of the gashes, like paper cuts, all over his fingers and palms, the backs of his hands, a new one each time the blade of shadow passes over him.

Just over his shoulder hovers a presence, whispering in his ear, reminding Will how good it felt. For the first time in his life, everything slid into place for the briefest of moments to show Will what he’s truly capable of becoming, when not restrained by conscience. It had been liberating, and terrifying all at once, and so caught up in the that desire for more, he’d panicked. As quickly as he’d succumbed to his violent inclinations, he’d consigned Hannibal and himself to death. 

That he’d felt regret when he’d woken up the in the hospital room hadn’t been a surprise. That he’d felt regret not because he’d survived, but because Hannibal hadn’t was what had left him reeling. He is still reeling now, all these months later. Adrift on riotous waves pulling him in opposing directions with enough force they threaten tear him apart. Will is grasping for solid ground that recedes further in the distance with each passing day.

The voices in his head are familiar. Will’s had them whispering to him his whole life. Recently, though, the voice has changed: grown deeper, vowels elongated with the accent, the thoughtful and precise way they rolling off the tongue. Appropriate that Hannibal should become the voice of the devil on Will’s shoulder, now that he’s gone.

But the siren call of what could have been doesn’t hold the same allure. Hannibal is gone, nothing more than a conjuring of Will’s imagination. What Will is capable of on his own pales in comparison to what they could have been together.

The aching, bitter longing for Hannibal is a constant presence. Will doesn’t know which of them he hates more. He clenches his hand into fists, nails digging crescent moons into the heel of his palm, bloody squishing in the webs of his fingers. How clearly he can still feel Hannibal beneath his touch, wonderfully solid. The fabric of his tattered sweater balled up in Will’s palm, dragging Hannibal closer, and hot breath stirring his hair.

It takes a moment for the realisation to settle over him and become real--that what he’s seeing and feeling isn’t just a memory of that night. Once it does, he’s up in a flurry of movement, skittering backwards and flipping on the kitchen light. Across the threshold, in that stark cold light, Will’s breath comes fast, heart hammering in his chest. He squeezes his eyes closed and and reminds himself it isn’t real, even as the blood trickles down his fingertips to drip on the floor with a steady tapping sound.

Will shudders, freezing in the Floridian heat. He shakes his head, as if the force of it can physically dispel the vision. “You’re gone,” he bites out.

Somehow, that works. Gradually the sounds of the night return. The chirping of crickets. Dog tails thumping lazily against the tile. The gentle creak of the house in the wind. He blinks down at his hands, whole and clean, then warily at the ceiling fan. As foolish as it seems in the moment, Will skirts the edge of the room to reach the switch and flips it off, waiting until it stops turning before the tension starts to ease from his shoulders.

It’s been years since he’s felt this out of touch with reality. Sweat drips from the curls at his hairline, down his temple and the back of his neck, sticking his shirt to skin, and for a brief second Will entertains the possibility that he’s sick again.

There’s no fever, though, none of the skull-cracking headaches. Deep inside, Will fears he already knows the answer. The thing he can’t bring himself to even consider, perhaps even worse than encephalitis.

Will sleeps fitfully that night. It’s only when the sun rises that he finally catches a couple of hours of rest.

Several days pass before Will realises he hasn’t had a nightmare in his sleep since that night with the fan. His sleep is empty, just black, silent and endless and all-consuming as death. Will thinks it should be restful, but it is the opposite. He spends hours after waking, wiping his gummy eyes, wondering if he’s really awake? Or had he never actually slept in the first place?

Still, the nightmares haven’t abandoned him entirely. They visit him during the daytime instead, creeping up on him in the quiet hours of the day. Every shadow has the potential to wound. Will finds himself taking the long way through the rooms of his house to avoid certain shadows, or rolling up the door to the boat house and dragging the engine he’s working on into the sunlight. It’s miserable, between the unrelenting glare of the sun on his back and humidity thick on the air, but the thought of all the dark spaces surrounding him, echoing the dark corners of his mind, is unbearable. 

He can’t even take himself out in public anymore, not since the last disastrous trip in town for groceries. Once upon a time he managed by keeping his head down. He didn’t want to know what monsters lurked in the eyes of others, so he simply avoided them altogether. Now he can’t ignore it even when he tries. Hannibal follows along just a step behind Will, commenting on every sin they spy. 

The couple that drink too much and take turns beating the shit out of each other and their kids. The woman that got away with murdering her mother for the insurance. The rich politician who bribed her way out of a hit and run. The businessman living in his beachfront mansion, who stole millions off the back of retirees. It rots them from the inside, and Will can almost see it on each exhale, breathing putrid black breath into the air.

Will has to stifle the urge to shove his hands over his ears, for all the good that would do to quiet Hannibal’s voice. Worse are the punishments his mind automatically conjures. His blade carving them open, the cold satisfaction at watching them die begging, wondering why. Taking something foul and making it beautiful. Creation from the destruction they’ve wrought.

The entire time shopping Will hunches over his cart, training his eyes on his list and the items he needs. Still, time and again his gaze wanders, and Hannibal whispers about the tongue he should take from the woman hissing abuse at her boyfriend through her cell phone, and the fine marbling on the portly man demanding to speak to the manager about an item on his receipt.

Standing in the checkout line and catching a glimpse of the young girl in the next lane, Will instantly sees himself in her. Those awkward preteen years when puberty hit and he was nothing but gangly limbs and a mop of untamed curls, face covered in spots. She’s got knobbly knees and elbows, bruised shins, and oversized round-framed glasses much like he did at her age, and she’s clasping a battered copy of _Breakfast of Champions_ to her chest.

When the girl lifts her head and catches Will’s eyes, that’s where the similarities end. She averts her gaze quickly, but Will’s already seen enough. The haunted, empty look of someone who’s been abused so long she’s grown resigned to it. A jumbled mess of shame and guilt and vulnerability.

The man at her side--father? Unlikely given the different colouring and build, and facial structure. Step-father, then. Will sizes him up right away. The pressed linen slacks and finely woven shirt, straw boat hat and loafers. It all speaks of someone with wealth and status, and an overabundance of pride in both. 

Will doesn’t even have to try to see all the ugly things that spill forth from him and take on physical form. The grooming from before he married her mother, winning them both over with his gifts and attentiveness. The touches that lingered but were never quite enough to draw attention from others. And then, the late night visits and honeyed threats, a low coaxing voice convincing her that no one would ever care for her like he did, and how lonely her mother would be without him.

The hum of the fluorescent overhead lights is deafening. They flicker on and off, casting strange shadows over the faces of the other customers, and then, all at once, half of them go out altogether. There’s a _click_ of hooves on the waxed floor. Hot breath on Will’s neck, teeth close enough to snap and tear skin.

It all happens so quickly, between one heartbeat and the next, so fast Will almost can’t process everything he’s seen before bile rises up in the back of his throat. He swallows it back, but can’t stop the heaving of his stomach. Will is sickened and innervated at once, engaged in a physical war with himself to keep from leaping over the conveyor belt right now and laying the man out on the floor. 

Will’s shoes squeak on the linoleum when he moves, shoving the woman behind him out of the way and crossing towards the man. He can feel the texture of the glass and the weight of the bottle of wine he takes from his cart, and the shift of the liquid when he swings it back. 

There’s a gratifying _thud_ of the bottle connecting with his skull, knocking his hat to the floor. It sings down Will’s arm and pounds in his heart. His range of vision narrows just to this. Everything else is swallowed by pitch black shadow. The man staggers and blood seeps out, staining sun-blond hair. With Will’s second swing, it begins to pour free. Crimson rivulets stream down over his shoulders to spatter at Will’s feet. 

Around them, the store is utter chaos, people screaming and running, but not the girl. She cowers back from Will as if she expects to be next. The seconds tick by, or it could be hours. Sweat drips from Will’s brown and he blinks it away, and the vision clears. 

In the next aisle over, the man is whole and undisturbed, speaking to the girl in a soft voice too low to carry the words, but she seems to shrink even further in on herself. Will can only imagine what he must look like--behind him, the next woman in line is studiously avoiding looking in his direction, and the cashier is seconds away from calling for security. 

Will bites out an apology and bolts for the door. He barely makes it outside before he’s spilling his lunch all over the sidewalk. 

Since then, Will’s taken to ordering his groceries to be delivered.

Will has never believed in ghosts, not even as a child. There were too many horribly real threats in the world all around him, why bother wasting his fear on something he couldn’t even see. Upon meeting Hannibal, many of the things Will had taken for granted his entire life began to fall away. Those things he experienced during his illness feel as real now, all these years later, as they did in the moment.

It is the same now. He’ll be working on an engine when a cloud passes in front of the sun, and Will feels weight of eyes boring into the back of his skull. The dogs will perk up, ears at attention, tails wagging. Will knows with absolute certainty that there is someone just behind him. Watching. Waiting. There’s a stirring of the air, the breath of the beast on the nape of his neck. Fine tremors run through the muscles of his shoulders and arms as they struggle against the urge to turn and look. 

The deepest, most primal part of him warns against looking, but in the end, Will can’t resist. There’s never anything there, but the sensation comes over him, time and again.

How can he say with certainty that it isn’t truly Hannibal’s ghost following him from beyond his watery grave? It would be just like him, determined even in death to see Will become what he is meant to be.

At night, Will sits in the circle of yellow cast by the porchlight and drinks until his face feels numb. The waves roll in, the crests silver in the moonlight. Will almost manages to convince himself that Hannibal is still out there. The seafoam traces patterns as it rises higher and higher with the tide. When they recede, he waits for them to leave human form in their place. Every dark spot, every dip in the sand or piece of trash or driftwood washed ashore has potential.

One morning he follows a set of footprints in the sand for over a mile. Randy leads the way, anxiously sniffing, and Winston stays close at heel, pressing his damp nose into Will’s palm and whining. When they end at the gravel parking lot of a nearby public beach, Will turns to find the trail washed away with the tide. He doesn’t even know if it was there in the first place. He doesn’t know what he’d hoped to find if they were.

Even in the moment Will threw them over the cliff, he’d never really believed he could kill Hannibal. He’d always seemed beyond that, something other than human--better than, if Will were being honest with himself. Will could punch and stab and hurl him from fantastic heights, he might lock him away for a time, but Hannibal would always rise again from the ashes.

In those brief seconds that stretched for an eternity, before the jarring impact of the water, Will had already resigned himself to being dragged out again by Hannibal. Because he likes to torture himself, Will spends the early, sleepless hours of the morning imagining what their life might have been like, in that reality. Hannibal warm in the bed at his side. No more shadows or nightmares besides the ones they create for themselves.

Sometimes Will considers walking back into the sea, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do if it spits him out again. He would cry if he weren’t so empty.

Isolation doesn’t help; if anything, it makes things worse. With every passing day, Will is less connected with reality, and any desire to return is rapidly dwindling. Hannibal’s ghost whispers in his ear and there is no one to intrude, no questioning, judgemental looks when Will responds.

“Are you haunting me out of love, or revenge?”

The sensation of another presence in the room is almost unbearable, because Will knows it isn’t real. Yet it takes so little effort to imagine Hannibal seated on the other side of the coffee table, crossing his legs and drawing a speculative breath. “My presence here has nothing to do with my feelings towards you, and everything to do with your feelings for me.”

Will’s eyelids feel as though they have weights attached, dipping closed in grief. The voice as he remembers it has startling clarity. It takes shape on the air and fills up all the empty spaces in the room. “So you tell me, Will, is it guilt or anguish that conjures me now?”

When Will opens his eyes, Hannibal is shrouded in growing shadow. Dark tendrils curl around his frame. His eyes are empty black, staring at Will with unblinking scrutiny.

“You already know the answer to that question,” Will whispers.

“ _You_ already know the answer to your question,” Hannibal counters. He clasps his hands in his laps, and Will’s eyes are drawn to the long-tipped nails, more like talons at the end of each finger. “Is it easier to acknowledge your desire to kill that man when I’m the one whispering the suggestion in your ear?”

Will snorts humourlessly. “I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for you, Hannibal, let alone mentally constructing elaborate death scenes for every person I pass on the street.”

“There seems little point in lying to yourself. You’ve never before been afforded such isolation,” Hannibal says. “No need to build forts when there is no one present from which to barricade yourself.”

“You’re suggesting that _I_ want to do it?” Will means for it to come out far more incredulously than it does, falling flat like a revelation he’s tried too long to ignore.

Hannibal shrugs. The mannerism is so painfully familiar that Will’s eyes sting at the sight of it. “Perhaps it always has been so. Only now you have no convenient scapegoat on which to place the blame.”

“If you’re only in my imagination, then whose influence am I under now?” 

_None but your own._ It hangs between them unspoken. 

Hannibal stands, his limbs unfold and grow longer and more slender. The distorted, disproportionate stretch of late afternoon shadow cast on asphalt. Will has to angle his head back to look him in the face, up past where his chest has gone concave, to see the Wendigo there in Hannibal’s place. It draws all the light in the room, casting an eerie grey gloom.

Will meets his empty gaze, unflinching. “I want that man dead.” 

The Wendigo tilts its head to the side, utterly alien in its intrigue. Its antlers pierce the air with the movement. Will is keenly aware of them, wonders what it might feel like to trace the tip of one with his finger.

“That isn’t so hard to admit,” it says, with Hannibal’s voice. “Who wouldn’t?”

“I want to be the one to kill him.” 

Saying it, a weight lifts from his chest. The sudden ability to breathe again after being underwater too long. The grief is still there at the forefront, but maybe it’s bearable. Hardly the healthiest way to keep a loved one’s memory alive, but no one has ever accused him of coping healthily. 

A grin breaks over his face at what Alana or Jack might say about his coping techniques. It’s been so long since he’s felt the expression on his face, his cheeks ache, particularly his newest scar. The creature grins back, a gash of razor sharp teeth and oil-black decay. When it steps closer, blocking out the light entirely, the shadows flay Will’s skin. He can feel each piece torn from muscle and sinew and bone, both agonising and cathartic at once. A scream claws its way from his throat and he closes his eyes against the pain. Nothing is left but one raw, exposed nerve singing with the potential.

When Will opens his eyes again, the Wendigo is gone, and the light has returned. Will is full of purpose, though it’s the middle of the night, he can’t wait.

The population of the entire island hovers right around 1200. Will lives at the far north end, in the sparsely inhabited woodland marshes outside of town. If the man was shopping in the same place as him, he must live out this way, too. On a hunch, Will checks the sex offender registry and gets a hit. James Wilcroft, age 42, has a conviction for public indecency from college, but nothing since then. 

Will wouldn’t be surprised to learn his step-daughter isn’t the first girl he’s hurt. He knows enough about men like this, constantly looking for someone newer and younger to victimise. A little more digging confirms his suspicions. Though Wilcroft has never been charged with abuse, sexual or otherwise, police responded to a domestic dispute at the home of a girlfriend over ten years ago, and his first wife, who brought two daughters to their marriage, has a restraining order against him.

With Wilcroft’s address, it is astonishingly easy to formulate a plan. Will doesn’t want to examine how readily his mind provides him with a solution for each roadblock along the way. Will sits outside the driveway of his ostentatious two-story home and watches Wilcroft’s two stepchildren leave for school, then Wilcroft himself. He follows him in town to the condo he uses as a show home for his real estate business.

Even in the low traffic areas of the island, taking him from the road is too risky, and with a stay-at-home wife and two children, taking him from home isn’t an option. The condo seems like a reasonable option. There are long stretches of the day when Wilcroft is alone in the condo. Other realtors work out of nearby condos, but none of them go into the one where Wilcroft receives clients.

Going in after hours is probably the best, though Will is tempted to take him back to the cabin. He likes the idea of working on familiar ground, where he knows no one is going to stumble on him. On the other hand, if he sets up the scene just right, he can avoid any undue attention. Make it look like a botched robbery or someone with a personal vendetta, and then he doesn’t have to deal with disposing the body afterward and trailing physical evidence all over his home and car.

Wilcroft isn’t a small man. He easily has five inches on Will, and though he’s got a slender build, he’s well muscled. Will follows him after work to a cross-fit gym where Wilcroft effortlessly takes himself through the paces. With a steady regime of whisky and take-away, Will is hardly in prime physical condition. Though he takes the dogs on a daily nighttime walk and occasional run along the beach, he knows he’s no match for Wilcroft. 

A head-on approach, as much as it is Will’s preference, is out of the question. The legacy of a half-decade in Hannibal Lecter’s association has left Will with an interesting, albeit illegal, pharmacological collection. Drugs acquired in those early days after leaving the asylum when he was hell-bent on retribution and hazy on how to achieve it. 

At first it had seemed poetic to dispose of Hannibal in the same fashion he’d disposed of his victims. As quickly as that idea had fallen apart, Will still has the paralytics and knockout drugs. Why he’s held onto them this long, he can’t say--they probably are reaching the end of their shelf-life--though perhaps Hannibal would care to comment.

Will slips in while Wilcroft is out for lunch and checks his schedule. His last appointment is scheduled for six that evening. There’s a measure of risk, going in at twilight, but to any outsider he should look like another potential buyer and go unnoticed.

The sensation of being watched is back in full-force. Will keeps expecting to turn around to find the Wendigo hovering just behind him and experiences a lurch of disappointment at discovering he’s still alone. The shadows have grown deep and dark with the setting sun, and Will resists the urge to stray from them, but rather than tracing his skin in cuts, they seem to form a hand against his spine, fingers curled in the small of his back, propelling him forward.

While Wilcroft lets his clients out the front, Will sneaks in the back. Wilcroft locks up the front and loosens his tie, lets out a long, heavy breath. Will slips off his shoes and withdraws the syringe from his pocket, then carefully uncaps it. The dosage is strong enough that only a couple milliliters will incapacitate Wilcroft in a manner of seconds. Of course, Will hasn’t been able to test it. It might just kill the man, which would be mildly disappointing, but not enough to dissuade him.

In socked feet, Will slides down the tile hallway, coming up close behind Wilcroft as he makes his way into the kitchen area. There are a dozen scenarios playing out simultaneously in Will’s mind. Crimes he’s profiled, murder scenes he’s visited in person or only through photograph, each providing him with the knowledge of how to make the attack and a whole line of contingency plans. 

Will doesn’t need them, in the end. Wilcroft pauses, perhaps sensing something’s wrong, but Will darts forward, closing the last foot between them and jabs the needle in the side of his neck. Wilcroft lashes out, spinning and throwing a punch all at once. Will dodges it easily and steps backward when Wilcroft lurches toward him. The drugs are already kicking in. He stumbles and tries to catch himself on the doorframe, then goes down hard on his knees.

It’s a strange, almost clinical detachment Will feels, watching Wilcroft struggle to remain upright. “I’m gonna kick your ass, mother fucker,” the man slurs, and makes a grab for Will. He ends up face down on the tile. Will kicks him hard in the shoulder, enough to roll Wilcroft onto his back. Wilcroft manages to grab onto his ankle with a weak grip and Will shakes him off.

If he was right about his conservative dosage, the injection will hopefully keep him awake and cognizant but unable to move. This isn’t arguable self-defense, or stopping a man in the act of killing someone else. Even if Dolarhyde had been premeditated, the act itself had been a direct result of his attempt on their lives. This is all new ground for Will, and without Hannibal at his side to guide him through the steps, he’s floundering, but determined to find his footing.

First thing first, moving Wilcroft out of sight from the windows. The adjoining condo is empty, also used as a showroom, but the neighbourhood is full of families walking their dogs and evening joggers. He hefts Wilcroft up under his armpits and drags him down the hall, around the corner towards the door to the basement.

Downstairs is mostly empty besides the washer and dryer for display and a wing-backed chair. Plenty of room for Will to work, to lay out plastic sheeting over the floor and walls. While considering how to do this, he vaguely recalled a serial killer working out of southern Florida who likes to disable his victims and relocate them before murdering them. Hannibal would no doubt be proud, with all the different ways he disguised his murders over the years so no one ever connected all the dots.

That killer likes his knives, and Will has brought one along, though as he recalls the vision in the grocery store, the reverberation of the blow of glass bottle against skull, he knows that won’t satisfy him. Will wants the bruising force of skin on skin, the split of his knuckles and the crunch of bone. He wants to feel it for days, brushing his thumb across the scabs to draw out the sting of it. He’ll leave DNA. It’s sloppy, after all his planning to attack the man here, to keep the place clean. Will doesn’t care. 

Because Hannibal isn’t here anymore. Neither is Hobbs or Brown or Tier, or any of a hundred killers who have occupied his mind. There’s no one in Will’s head but himself. A bald bulb suspended from the ceiling casts bright light across the room, banishing every shadow. With all his experience and knowledge and foresight, Will hadn’t understood until this very moment what the shadows had borne, until they were gone.

 _This is_ my _becoming._

Will goes down on his knees straddling Wilcroft’s hips. He barely processes the sensation of landing hard against poured concrete. Wilcroft’s lips move, but his tongue won’t work right. Whatever he’s trying to say comes out as nothing more than a muffled groan. Will recalls the feeling quite clearly, lying on Cordell’s slab. 

“Sorry, can’t hear you,” Will says cheerfully. He grabs Wilcroft by the collar and jerks him up, stares him eye to eye. He’s always found that far more effective a manner of communication than using his words. Beyond his fury, Wilcroft is panicky and afraid, and honestly unaware of why anyone would want to hurt him.

“Let me guess,” Will hisses. “ _Why me?_ ” He gives Wilcroft a rough shake before dropping him back against the floor with a loud crack. The sheer audacity of the man, the smug belief he’d never be caught, coupled with a failure to see anything wrong with what he’d done. It has Will acting without thought, landing the first blow to Wilcroft’s cheek. Hard enough to draw blood from one of them. Both of them? Will follows it up with another, and a third, this time with the satisfying crunch of the cartilage in Wilcroft’s nose.

Will’s breath comes in shallow, panting gasps. Not from exertion, but the adrenaline rushing through his veins, narrowing his field of vision to Wilcroft’s face, to the blood-stained saliva bubbling from his lips, the burst vessel in his sclera. Blow after blow in rapid succession, and Will originally meant to answer Wilcroft. To let him know this was on behalf of the children he’s hurt. How he’ll never hurt another child again.

He could go on about some meticulously reasoned revenge for those children. It may have even started that way, but Will knows better now. That was all an excuse, crafted by his subconscious, allowing him plausible deniability. But while he is glad to rid the world of a paedophile, that isn’t why he’s here.

This has descended into something rawer, answering the call of the dark, shadowy spaces in his mind he’s fought so hard and long to ignore. No rationalisations, no justifications. Will’s pulse pounds in his ears and rushes through his veins. It burns hotter with every pump of his heart and spurs him on, until Wilcroft no longer has a face so much as a pulpy mess of broken bone and blood and torn flesh.

Still it’s not enough. Will wants to rip him open. Wants to dig his bare hands in Wilcroft’s chest, split open his ribs, rip out his heart and eat it whole. Will’s so caught up in the imagining of it, he isn’t sure what’s real and what isn’t. If the blood he’s tasting is Wilcroft’s, or if he’s bitten through the scar on the inside of his cheek as he conjured the fantasy.

It’s wild and freeing, though a rational part of Will, growing smaller every second, cautions that he should be terrified. Instead, he throws back his head and laughs. That catch of grief lodged in his chest loosens a little more when Will drives a knife in Wilcroft’s sternum and drags down through muscle and fascia.

A sound draws Will out of himself. So faint he barely notices it at first over the wet, sucking sound of Wilcroft’s death rattle, and his own heaving breaths. The whisper of fabric on fabric, and frankly if his senses weren’t on overdrive, he probably never would have heard it. He spins faster than he would have thought himself capable, still crouched low and ready to fight, but what he sees causes the knife to clatter to the floor from suddenly nerveless fingers.

From the darkened alcove of the stairway, Hannibal bleeds out of the shadows and steps forward to stand in that naked, unforgiving light. Every line of him crisply defined, the details too fine for a forgery of Will’s mind, and he’s frozen in disbelief, lungs caught between inhale and exhale, waiting for the shadows to surge forward and swallow him up again.

Hannibal steps forward and Will’s chest seizes painfully. He doesn’t know whether to scream or run or fight, and the impulse for each tears him in a different direction. Too often he’s seen that face haunting him, but never so real, where Will is certain that if he reaches out to touch he’ll find Hannibal solid beneath his touch, the rise and fall of his breast, hand warm when it falls on Will’s hip to draw him in. And Will himself blinking awake to find it all one long, torturous nightmare, standing silhouetted at the edge of the precipice.

“We all tend to fear ourselves, our own truths and feelings, more than any outside influence,” Hannibal says. His voice sounds thunderingly loud in the room. It has shape and mass and volume, filling up the space, the subtle vibrations lacking in the anechoic chamber of Will’s mind.

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.”

“Did you just quote _Morrison_ at me,” Will asks, rising to his feet unsteadily. Joy and rage sweep through Will in equal measure, because there’s no way he’d have conjured this, in his wildest imaginings.

Hannibal takes another step closer, the cautious posture of a man approaching a wild creature. He splays his hands. “Let’s just say I was testing the boundaries of reality. I wanted to see what would happen.”

That tips the scales in favour of the rage, spilling over Will hotter than Wilcroft’s blood on his hands. All tangled up in desire and longing and the months of despair between them. Will launches himself at Hannibal, hits him square in the jaw, and before Hannibal can stumble more than a step back, grabs him by the front of his shirt and hauls him close. 

Their mouths meet with a violent clash, teeth and tongue and copper. Will can’t help the needy, wondering sound that escapes him, and responds by pushing Hannibal away. He digs in his canines sharp, perversely pleased by Hannibal’s grunt of pain and the way he brings a hand up to probe gingerly at his bloodied mouth.

Will stays still, breathing heavily and teetering between further violence and giving in to every hopeless fantasy he’s entertained since the fall. Anything other letting the anguish take over and swallow him whole. His hand is shaking, and he makes himself release the death grip he has on Hannibal’s shirt to stroke over the steady thud of his heart. “Where have you been?” he asks at last, helpless. _Fuck_ , there are tears stinging his eyes.

Hannibal lays his hand over Will’s, pressing firmly as if to say _I’m here. This is real._ He leans in and then stops abruptly, uncertain of how his touch will be received, and Will gives his answer, meeting him halfway with a gentle press of lips. 

More caress than kiss, mindful of Hannibal’s torn lip. Will’s eyes flutter shut. Hannibal parts his mouth and Will responds in kind, inhaling deeply of the warm breath on his lips. A tangible reminder that this is not another nightmare.

“I thought you were dead,” Will says. The grief stings in his jawline like it’s been wired shut. It makes the words come out strained. “You let me think--”

“Sepsis set in before Chiyoh could secure medical care. By the time I was well enough to come for you, you were nowhere to be found.” Hannibal’s gaze flickers over his face, searching. “And to be honest, I wasn’t certain how I’d be received, once I found you.”

Apologies stop up the back of his throat and Will swallows them down. All the blows they’ve dealt one another, those words hardly have any meaning any longer. Instead he clutches Hannibal’s fingers tightly in his own. Tight enough to make the bones creak and the skin bruise. 

“I tried so hard not to miss you. As hard as I tried to ignore what was growing in me,” he says. “You can see how well that turned out.”

Hannibal’s teeth gleam when he grins, full of feral delight, as he looks over the scene of Mister Wilcroft, now expired. Will idly wonders if there’ll be anything salvageable from the mess he made carving into him. 

“You did quite a number on him,” Hannibal muses, and then his eyes light on Will’s again. The hunger he sees there sets a fire under Will’s skin, spreading feverishly over his scalp and down his chest to settle in the pit of his stomach. “I can’t wait to see what you do with me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a follow-up to what appeared in the Radiance Anthology, as it exceeds the rating of the book. Be warned, there is explicit content here!

Will can’t say which of them moves first. He drags Hannibal close as Hannibal’s hands slide up his arms to wrap around his shoulders, and their mouths meet again. There is nothing objectively arousing about Hannibal’s touch, but Will has dreamed of it, resigned himself to never again having it. Now the simplest stroke of Hannibal’s fingers send thrills spiralling down Will’s nerves. He sinks his hands in Will’s hair and rubs away at the tension that has spent months gathering. 

Hannibal’s kiss is as eloquent as his words. Every swipe of tongue and press of teeth, the tang of blood passing back and forth between them speaking to the depth of his longing. Will’s own hunger matched, at last. It’s as though they’re falling all over again, tumbling into that endless, dark abyss. Only this time Hannibal holds fast and they sink together.

It’s another type of violence from that he turned on Wilcroft that Will turns on Hannibal now. Teeth gnashing, nails scoring, pushing him back onto the unforgiving floor, where Wilcroft’s blood runs and pools in the divots and valleys of the plastic sheeting. They tear at one another’s clothing, the air filled with the sound of ripping fabric and buttons pinging against the floor, and their heaving breaths.

Even with Hannibal’s shirt out of the way, skin soft and hot under Will’s palm, it isn’t enough. He wants to sink his hands inside the cavity of Hannibal’s chest, all the most essential parts of him held within his fingers. His touch leaves trails of drying blood for him to follow with his mouth, biting and sucking angry welts in its stead. Hannibal makes a grunting sound halfway between pleasure and pain, but his own touch remains cautious, as if uncertain he is allowed this. 

Once he reaches the puckered scar left by the Dragon’s bullet, Will traces his fingers over the spot, barely more than a whisper of skin on skin. He presses his lips to the centre, and then parts his mouth to scrape his teeth across the surface. Hannibal’s hand in his hair tugs him roughly upward as Hannibal bends in half to meet him for a kiss.

Will allows it for the moment, already fumbling with the fastening of Hannibal’s pants. He’s overly aware of the weight of his belt buckle and the feel of the button slipping free of its hole. The heel of his palm meets the bulge of Hannibal’s growing erection as he eases down the zipper, and Hannibal flexes his hips into the touch.

A shudder runs through Hannibal, from the first touch of Will’s hand on him, shoved down the front of Hannibal’s boxers to wrap around his cock. It wracks up Hannibal’s body and into Will, like the closing of a circuit. Will jerks back from his mouth as if shocked and sinks down onto his heels to watch as he eases Hannibal’s cock free. In this moment, he is a creature made of desire and impulse, which makes it so easy to give into what he wants without sparing a thought for doubt. Will leans down to swallow Hannibal’s cock as far as he can take it.

Lust has made him reckless, he gags and doesn’t care, just swallows back the sensation and presses further. Hannibal’s hold tightens, and Will doesn’t know if the tears stinging his eyes are from that, or the cock hitting the back of his throat. He eases back the foreskin with his hand and pulls off until just the head of Hannibal’s cock remains in his mouth, exposed and delicate. When he swipes his tongue there, he’s rewarded with a salty rush and a sound torn from Hannibal’s throat that makes his own cock throb.

And just like that, Will knows exactly what he wants. He sits up and scrambles at his own pants, can’t get them undone fast enough. Shoves them down around his thighs and shifts off Hannibal long enough to kick them the rest of the way off before straddling his thighs again.

Hannibal’s eyes are luminous, full of awe as he drinks Will in. When Will goes up on knee, other foot braced on the ground, and sucks three fingers into his mouth, those eyes blaze with sudden understanding. His hands sweep down Will’s back and over his sides to rest, bruisingly tight, on his waist.

Will had touched himself, trying to imagine what it would feel like it it were Hannibal’s fingers stretching him, Hannibal’s hand on his cock, Hannibal’s cock splitting him open. Any pleasure it brought him left him hollow afterwards, carving emptiness deeper into his chest, and Hannibal himself would be the only thing to fill it.

Fingers slickened, Will reaches between his legs and works in two right down to the second knuckle. The sting of the stretch is barely noticeable over the surge of adrenaline and arousal. He flexes his fingers wide, works them deeper, then back to add the third. Hannibal licks his own palm until it’s glistening and begins to stroke himself.

The distant, reasonable corner remaining in Will’s mind tells him this isn’t sufficient, but he’s given up listening to reason a long while ago. He pulls his fingers free and bats Hannibal’s hand aside to go down on him again, letting the saliva pool in his mouth and run down Hannibal’s cock until he’s dripping in it. Then he lifts himself over Hannibal, wincing at the grind of his knees on concrete and plastic, the grit and folds digging into the skin. 

Hannibal guides him down, and Will focuses instead on the slow burn as he sinks down. His body opens for this intrusion in fits and starts, and Will tries to breath through it, though it is more and more difficult to get a lungful of breath. Every sensation is so vivid in its immediacy, overwhelming to the point where he’s afraid he might hyperventilate and pass out. Sweat drips from the ends of his hair to fall on Hannibal’s chest, and he comes to rest with the curve of his ass to Hannibal’s groin.

It’s good in a way that defies description. Not the pleasure he’s always equated with sex, but something both deeply terrifying and comforting. The same sensation from standing on the cliffside magnified, truly seeing Hannibal and being seen in turn. Every part laid bare, and embraced. Known and _loved_. 

A broken sound claws its way from Will’s throat as he bends over to press their mouths together. Fierce, open kisses, breathing each other in. There is too much friction to move how he’d really like, and his legs are trembling already like they won’t support him. Will braces his hands on Hannibal’s chest and rocks desperately. Past the initial adjustment, he can’t get enough.

Hannibal is thick, stretching him just beyond the edge of pain and it feels too good when he moves, just right. Hips pressed back, little pulses that nudge back and forth over his prostate. He throws back his head and Hannibal lunges for his throat. It is impossibly arousing, having those teeth at his pulse and the image of Hannibal ripping out Dolarhyde’s throat painted behind his closed eyes. The vulnerability and trust in the knowledge that he alone is safe in Hannibal’s grasp. His cock throbs almost painfully.

“Touch me,” he pants, “Hannibal.” The words have barely crossed his lips before Hannibal obliges, licking his palm before gripping Will’s cock tightly. Will groans in relief. His neck drops forward to rest his forehead against Hannibal’s.

This close, Hannibal’s features are nothing more than a blur of shadowy skin. Will’s heart lurches at the reminder that this is real and not some wild fantasy he’s conjured. Hannibal is whole and solid and alive. Everything about him speaks to that, from the scent of his sweat and blood, the heat of his skin against Will’s, the thrust of his hips upwards, over and over, into Will’s body.

When he starts to cum, it’s more than the pleasure of release. The emotions are far more powerful still, clenching tight in his chest. The ache of mourning, of inescapable and irreparable loss, the bitter stinging grief, all swept away and replaced with the sheer, utter relief of Hannibal’s presence, solid and whole beneath him. He gasps at the intensity of it, buries his face in Hannibal’s throat and tries to breathe, to calm himself, to rein it in. But there’s no controlling it, all he can do is coast on the waves as they take him.

Hannibal’s arms come up tight around his back and he rolls them, Will’s head resting in the cradle of his hands. He continues to move; deep, rocking thrusts that draw out the hot pulses of pleasure. His breath is hot in Will’s hair, his cheek damp against Will’s forehead, and the sound Hannibal makes when he cums--raw, vulnerable, wondering--resounds in Will.

Tears spill hot from his eyes. He clutches at Hannibal’s back and brings up his legs to hook around the back of Hannibal’s knees to keep him from pulling away, though Hannibal gives no indication of wanting to move. His weight settles over Will, and the bulk of him blocks out the light from overhead. For the first time in months, the shadows that surround him are only shadows.

From the corner of his eye, Will can just make out the shape of Wilcroft’s dead body. He waits for regret to settle in, cold and anxious, but the minutes tick by, and it never comes. Hannibal’s presence changes a great many things, but not the impulse that drove Will here tonight. 

This was how it had to happen, he realises. If Hannibal had remained at his side after Dolarhyde, if they’d gone on the run together, Will would have forever questioned the level of influence exerted over him. It would have stewed resentment and self-loathing within him, as he acted as Hannibal’s accomplice and jailkeep all at once, until he eventually tried to kill them both again, and perhaps succeeded.

It doesn’t completely erase the anger, but it quiets it. Words are too clumsy to express the thoughts and emotions in this moment. Will’s fingers clutch tighter at Hannibal’s back, and he presses a kiss to his neck in silent thanks, for he does not doubt for an instant that Hannibal knows, and stayed away as long as he did for this very reason.

The question remains, however, _what now_? As soon as Hannibal revealed himself, this was no longer Will’s design alone. There was no denying that whatever path they took from here would be together. 

Will ruffles a hand through Hannibal’s hair, and pulls away with a grimace, as sweat-slick skin separates from plastic sheeting. He’s already been far too reckless tonight, though he can’t quite bring himself to regret it. “We should move. He works late some nights, but if we wait too long, his wife might start to wonder.”

“Your plan?” Hannibal asks. Will makes the mistake of watching him roll gracefully onto his back. The lift of his hips and arch of his spine as he pulls his trousers back into place leaves Will momentarily speechless. When he catches himself staring, and lifts his gaze, it is to find Hannibal watching him with a lazy smirk.

“I have the tools for dismembering the body at home. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions.” 

Hannibal rises to his feet, adjusting the ruined bits of his shirt around him with a remarkable dignity, given the tattered edges. He offers Will a hand up. “That depends on whether you wish to draw attention to yourself, or not.”

Plans of discarding Wilcroft’s body under the guise of another killer ran now sound remarkably, unnecessarily reckless. At the beginning of the evening, there was nothing left for Will to lose, and now… He shakes out his wrinkled slacks and bends to pull them on. “If there’s anything good that’s come of you faking your death and putting me through hell for the past eight months, it’s Jack thinking you’re dead.” 

When he straightens, Hannibal is standing far closer, enough that were he anyone else, Will would be taking several steps backward. Instead, he leans closer, shuddering when Hannibal’s hand lands possessively and steadying on his back. “An apology seems woefully inadequate, for how you’ve suffered here alone.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Will murmurs, bringing up his hand to brush back the hair from Hannibal’s temple, tracing down to cup his cheek. “Alone in your cell?”

Hannibal turns into his touch, kiss pressed into Will’s palm. Will sighs and says, “I suppose I can forgive you your temporary death, if you can forgive me.”

“A clean slate,” Hannibal muses. His eyes sparkle mischievously. “Water under the cliff, as it were.”

Will isn’t quite ready to make light of it. The grief is still too fresh, too close to the surface. Having lost something as essential to his being as his own limb, those phantom pains will linger. He has no doubt it will take months, or perhaps even years of reminding himself that Hannibal is alive and well before it leaves him entirely, if it ever does. Waking in the night full of fear of loss, reaching out for Hannibal beside him, always uncertain whether he’ll find a warm body or cold sheets.

He takes back his hand and turns towards the body. “Wilcroft can simply disappear, and in another few months, I can, too. There’s no one left to care enough to wonder where I’ve gone. Then you and I can go wherever we want, without having to constantly look over our shoulders.”

Hannibal’s touch on his shoulder is hesitant, but reassuring. When Will doesn’t shrug him away, he wraps his arms around Will’s waist. “There’s someplace I’d like to share with you,” he says near Will’s ear, and drags their cheeks together. “I found it during my convalescence and even uncertain of my reception, I must confess, I bought it with you in mind.”

Will lays a hand briefly over Hannibal’s, where it rests in turn above his old scar. He doesn’t care where they go, as long as it’s away from here, and it’s together. As incredibly trite as that sounds, he keeps it to himself. With one last stroke of his fingers across the back of Hannibal’s hand, he pulls away, and turns instead to the task at hand: tugging down the sheeting, careful to keep the blood spatter on the inside, and rolling it towards Wilcroft’s body.

“Help me with this?” 

Hannibal moves at once to obey. Familiar, practiced moves of a man who’s done this more times than Will has even guessed. They work together in silence for a moment, before Will is struck with the odd domesticity of it, the two of them crouched on opposite sides as they tuck the ends of twisted plastic around the body, and he has to shake his head in resigned amusement. Hannibal arches a questioning brow, paused in his work.

Will leans over to kiss him, soft and slow, searching. When they part, he rests his forehead against Hannibal’s, unwilling to go far. “Thank you.”

For seeing the darkness and coaxing it free, _embracing it_. For allowing Will his vengeance and forgiving him it. For coming back. 

Hannibal’s eyes fall closed in silent acceptance, and he nuzzles Will’s cheek. “Whatever the personal cost to me, I would pay it again and again without question, to see you as I have tonight. As I hope to continue to see you, for however long you will permit it.”

Will isn’t the only one who’s been doubting his reality since their fall into the sea. As inextricably as they have become intertwined, he can imagine reaching out for confirmation of Hannibal’s presence in the middle of the night, only to find Hannibal already reaching back for confirmation of his own across the distance between them.

“Before, I thought the thing I feared most was the thing inside of me,” he says slowly, thoughtfully, coming to terms with the truth of what he’s saying as the words pass his lips. “What I had the potential to become. I was terrified of it. It wasn’t until I saw you washed up on that shore that I realised I was wrong. But Morrison was right. Once you expose yourself to that, the fear loses its power.”

“You’re free,” Hannibal finishes for him. 

Will rewards him with a smile, wider and wilder than his face is accustomed to, pulling at his scar in a way he finds oddly satisfying. “Now, grab his legs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” - Jim Morrison
> 
> Just in case it isn't clear here, there will probably be another one-off in this series that makes it crystal clear whether Hannibal is real or just a figment of Will's imagination. However, for those who prefer it to remain ambiguous, I thought I'd conclude this fic without coming down one way or another. If you care at all about authorial intent, you can look through the comments and discover whether I think he's alive or not!


End file.
